Workshops

Getting started with Serverless and Lambda Functions

Luciano Mammino

DATE Thursday 12th of April 2018

LOCATION Rome, Polo Didattico - Piazza Oderico da Pordenone 3

In this workshop, we will get started with Serverless on AWS with Lambda Functions and we will learn all the fundamentals needed to build a complete application from the ground up.
Take a look at the Special Package:“1 Workshop + Conference Ticket”: we offer 15% DISCOUNT on the total price!

DURATIONThe workshop is full-day (8 hours) from 9:00 to 18:00, with one hour lunch break.

CHECK IN 8:30 – 9:00

PRICESEvery 8 hour workshop ticket is fixed:
– to 160 € until the 2nd of February;
– to 190 € until the 3rd of March;
– to 220 € until the 29th of March;
– to 250 € until the 11th of April at 5 pm
Take a look at the Special Package:“1 Workshop + Conference Ticket”: we offer 15% DISCOUNT on the total price!

LUCIANO MAMMINO
Luciano is an Engineer born in 1987, the same year that “Super Mario Bros” was released, which, by chance is his favorite game! He started coding at the age of 12 using his father’s old i386 provided only with DOS and the QBasic interpreter. He is a Senior Software Developer at Planet 9 Energy in Dublin where he has been using the Serverless paradigm for more than 1 year to power up the next-gen electricity provider for the UK market. He is also the co-author of “Node.js design patterns” 2nd edition (Packt, http://amzn.to/1ZF279B) and maintainers of Fullstack Bulletin (http://fstack.link)

ABSTRACT
During the course of this workshop, we will deep dive on the serverless paradigm, analyzing the most important features and qualities and finally how the design of a serverless application differs from a traditional one. After this introduction, we will move quickly into practical exercises that will allow us to build, step by step, a complete serverless application on top of AWS services such as Lambda Functions, API Gateway, S3, CloudFront, Dynamo DB and CloudFormation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The workshop is designed to allow the attendees to learn how to build a complete web application from scratch. Theoretic bits, examples and exercises will guide them through adding all the needed building blocks from the ground up. At the end of the workshop, every attendee will have their own version of a realistic application hosted and running in its own AWS account and all the necessary skills needed to build even more advanced applications.
– An introduction to Serverless: a quick overview of what serverless actually is, what are the main advantages and use cases and the most famous serverless providers currently available in the market.
– Serverless on AWS: a walkthrough over the AWS services that are commonly used to develop serverless applications (Lambda Functions, Dynamo DB, Cloudwatch, API Gateway, etc…), followed by the classic serverless architectures used to develop the backend and the frontend parts of a web application.
– Developing Serverless: a quick practical overview of how it feels to build, test and deploy our first lambda and some advice to speed up our workflow.
– Building RESTful web API: how to build a RESTful web API backed by Dynamo DB as a data storage
– Storing resources in S3: a quick session on how to store assets on S3 and expose them on the web
– Creating Single Page Applications (SPAs) on serverless: how to host a single page application without servers using only S3 and CloudFront, followed by an explanation on how to make the application pull data from our Lambda-backed RESTful APIs.
– Forms in the serverless land: how to build Lambda functions that can process the input of a form and how to integrate them in our Single Page Application.
– Asynchronous data processing: a deep dive on how to use CloudWatch, SQS and Lambda Functions to build a workers pipeline that can be used to process data or react to events in the background of a web application.
– Troubleshooting serverless: some ideas on how to take care of logging, monitoring and debugging in every part of our serverless web application.
– Tips & Tricks and further exploration: closing up with some tips and tricks for overcoming some of the most common difficulties with serverless and build more reliable applications.

TRAINING OBJECTIVES
This workshop will guide the attendees across the Serverless paradigm using Javascript, Node.js and many AWS services. The goal of the training is to learn how to build complete serverless web applications, including:
– What serverless paradigm is, its qualities and the most common use cases
– How to write, test and deploy your first Lambda Function
– How to create RESTful APIs on top of AWS Lambda Function and API Gateway
– How to use S3 and Dynamo DB as storage layers for serverless application
– How to host a Single Page application in a serverless fashion using S3 and CloudFront
– How to deploy and update a complete serverless application using CloudFront and SAM (Serverless Application Model)
– How to monitor and debug serverless applications in AWS

WHO THE WORKSHOP IS DEDICATED TO?
This workshop is dedicated to all the developers that are eager to explore serverless and learn how to build web applications on top of this paradigm. For the specific advantages that serverless brings to the table, this workshop especially suits developers and companies that need to fulfil at least one of the following requirements:
– Short time to market: build products and release features quickly. Experiment and iterate fast to find the perfect product-market fit.
– Scale quickly: develop and maintain highly scalable applications that are subject to frequent or unexpected traffic spikes.
– Disposable pay per usage infrastructure: use your resource in an efficient way, pay only for the computing power and the storage you really need to use at any given point in time.

HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
– An AWS account and an AWS user with admin access –> very important: The AWS account must be already active before coming to the Workshop. AWS services are paid on a consumption basis, and Lambda Functions are among the cheapest ones. If users have created an account less than one year ago, they should be able to use free-tier limits without costs. In any case, costs shouldn’t be more than $2.
– A laptop with Node.js >= 6.10 installed and a Bash terminal (or a compatible one)
– AWS CLI installed (last version) and authenticated
– A REST client of your choice

WARNINGSeats are limited.The workshop will be held only if the minimun number of attendees is reached.